The Utah Utes are the most important team in college football

Utah is about to make “what if” a reality.Photo by Marvin Gentry-US PRESSWIRE

There are many college football debates that can never be settled.

Could Auburn have beaten USC in 2004? Was Herschel Walker better than Barry Sanders? Are Oregon’s uniforms hideous or genius?

There is one debate that is about to settled and it’s going to impact the national championship picture as long as the BCS remains.

What would happen if an elite “mid-major” team played a BCS conference schedule?

Since the 1998 birth of the Bowl Championship Series 11 teams from outside the six Automatic Qualifying conferences have finished the regular season undefeated but not one has played for the national championship. The argument has always been that if BCS-Buster X played in BCS Conference Y they’d have three or four losses.

Now we finally get the answer. Utah, welcome to the Pac-12. The whole college football world is watching.

The Utes went to (and won) two BCS bowl games as members of the Mountain West Conference. If they can do the same against a Pac-12 schedule it breaks down the final barrier for the so-called Non-Automatic Qualifying conferences.

It means Boise State can play for the national championship.

What will it take for Utah to make the case for its Non-AQ comrades? It’ll have to be something very close to what the Utes accomplished in the MWC. They went 12-0 under Urban Meyer in 2003 and 13-0 under Kyle Whittingham five years later. In between and since they haven’t missed a bowl game.

For the argument to work Utah needs to be competitive in the Pac-12 right away. If you give them a one-season cushion on the five-year cycle they need an elite season by 2014. How elite? It’ll have to be at least a 10-win regular season to keep the discussion going. Eleven wins or better would hammer the point home.

If, however, Utah ends up being nothing but a middle-of-the-Pac team the strength-of-schedule trump card will continue to be played ensuring the biggest trophy is always held up by a member of the power conferences.

What about TCU moving to the Big East? Don’t the Horned Frogs share some of this prove-you’re-still-great burden? The problem is the Big East hasn’t played for a national championship since Miami and Virginia Tech left. TCU will have an automatic BCS bid but they’ll still be viewed at the bottom of the totem pole beneath the other AQ champions.

That is, of course, unless Utah tears it up in the Pac-12.

One single program may seem to be too small a sample size but it’s all we’ve got. College football polls are already based on incomplete information. With so few games and even fewer heavyweight non-conference matchups voters have to look for any possible way to compare teams with vastly different schedules. Holding up Boise State, the new king of the MWC, next to Utah, the old king, is going to be a natural comparison.

The odd twist is the Utes themselves don’t care about any of this. They already have their golden ticket. If they win the Pac-12 they play in the Rose Bowl. If they go undefeated they play for a national championship. It doesn’t matter if it takes four years or 14 years or 40 years, Utah is set.

But Boise State cares. TCU also needs Utah to win. Interestingly enough, so does BYU. Any outsider program that wants its 12-0 record to be taken seriously needs the Utes to find big success in their new home.

On the other hand, the teams that have the most to gain if Utah fails are the members of the big six conferences, including the other 11 schools in the Pac-12. They don’t need an extra argument in favor of somebody from the Mountain West playing for a national championship. They don’t want two undefeated teams from Conference USA and the WAC claiming they both deserve BCS bowl bids in the same year.

The powers that be want to be able to say Utah beating Alabama in the Sugar Bowl was a one-game fluke and now that they’re playing with the big boys week in and week out we won’t see them running the table for a long, long time.

The un-powers that be hope to be able to point to Utah as proof the football teams at the top of the Non-AQ leagues are just as strong as anyone else’s football teams, and just as worthy of playing for the crystal football.

The debate is almost over.

– – – – –

Scott Terrell will be happily watching the Pac-12 South this year. Take a peek at Twitter and Facebook.

Interesting point and something I’ve thought about myself! Though, it’s hard to see many fans actually cheering on the Utes. They’re the reason the Broncos were left out of the BCS in 2008 and we would have loved a shot at them. Its always nice seeing teams you’ve whooped have success, especially vs. BCS Conference teams! Boise State has beaten Utah twice in the last five seasons, outscoring them 62-6!

Utah shut BSU out of big bowl games twice and for their own good. They went on to lose their small-time bowl games those two respective years.

NathanAugust 8, 2011

There is a problem with your point however. The Utah teams they beat 62-6 were definately not the teams they had when they trounced Pitt in the Fiesta Bowl in 2005 and shellshocked Alabama in the Sugar Bowl in 2008. Furthemore, the team they have this year isn’t one of those teams. So unless you could go back and let those teams play Boise St. those years or play a Pac10 schedule the analysis and comparisons don’t work. I really believe the 2004 team would have beat USC in the National Championship game but we won’t ever know, will we? You can’t compare apples to oranges. Boise States team in 2004 would have got run by Utah and Alabama. Come on! Each year is a whole new team.

KyleAugust 8, 2011

Seeing as BSU beats Utah this isn’t relevent to BSU. If they win it helps BSU but since BSU whoops Utah and if they get whooped in the Pac 12 then it means nothing.

Rifram09August 8, 2011

Garbage! TCU needs Utah to win in order to gain credibility? Nope. TCU stands on it’s own now. TCU plays an OOC schedule over the next five years (OU ’12, VA ’12, @LSU ’13, LSU ’13, @Arkansas ’14, Arkansas ’14) which, coupled with a BIG EAST conference schedule, will give them a shot at a NCG. It makes no difference what Utah does.

Rifram09August 8, 2011

***LSU ’14, @Arkansas ’15, @Arkansas ’16

MiguelAugust 8, 2011

Journalists need to calm down with hyping this Non-AQ thing. Its getting really hard to swallow. Utah’s results just means something to Utah. Just like Hawaii flopping in their BCS game meant Hawaii shouldn’t have been there.

SideshowAugust 8, 2011

And yet the Hawaii game was used as an argument against both Utah in 2008, and Boise State/TCU in 2009.

I hate the logic here. If Utah does poorly in the Pac-12, that proves their 2008 Sugar Bowl victory was a fluke? How many players from that 2008 bowl winning team are still on the team, anyway? The entire landscape of college football has changed since then. Current success is a terrible metric to use in predicting past potential success. College football is all about teams, and teams change every year. If it were only about programs, then the top 25 would be identical every single year, wouldn’t it? I just don’t see how the Utes 2011 season will somehow add to or take away from previous seasons.

SideshowAugust 8, 2011

You may hate the logic, and the logic may be extremely flawed, but it’s still the way that the logic works in College Football.
College Football, is not just about teams, College football is all about opinion and perceived success. The Polls, the BCS, all of it is about perception, not reality. Past success, and failures routinely are taken into account in subsequent seasons. It’s why some teams can lose once or twice, and barely take a hit in the polls, while others will drop a few spots for a close victory.
May already view the 2008 Sugar Bowl victory as a fluke. “Alabama wasn’t interested”, “They couldn’t do it week in and week out” are very common excuses one hears about that game.
If you think that lack of success by Utah in the Pac-12 won’t be used by the Cartel to widen the gap between the Haves, and Have nots, you seriously have not been paying attention. By The Way 12 players from the 2008 team are still on the roster, only 4 of which redshirted in ’08. Major contributors from 2008 include Derrick Shelby, Tony Bergstrom, Matt Martinez, Lei Talemaivao, Nai Fotu, and Chaz Walker.

StenarAugust 8, 2011

If Utah does well, it doesn’t mean any other team would do as well given the same situation. I doubt Boise could compete in a BCS conference. The teams they play now are glorified high school teams. There are even high school teams that are better than most of Boise’s opponents. Also, it’ll be interesting to see how BSU fares now that they’ve been banned from wearing blue suits on a blue field.

jayZAugust 8, 2011

Sloppy Joe: Most of the players from the 2008 Utah team are in the NFL, that’s where they are now.

gchrisAugust 8, 2011

This is not true. Most of the Utah players from the 2008 team are doing something other than playing football. Hopefully they received degrees from this “research” university and have jobs.

The whole argument will be a little off this year since Utah doesn’t play either Oregon or stanford, which are by far the best teams in the pac. Furthermore, Utah gets 5 out of 9 conference games at home and has the luck of south favorite usc being short on scholarship players and ineligible.
So its really shaping up perfectly for Utah to be successful beyond what its talent level would suggest. However, any amount of success might be tempered by the national media due to the above reasons as well as a general, head-scratchingly bizarre lack of respect for the pac.